FPB: Improving Multi-Scale Feature Representation Inside Convolutional Layer Via Feature Pyramid Block

Multi-scale features exist widely in biomedical images. For example, the scale of lesions may vary greatly according to different diseases. Effective representation of multi-scale features is essential for fully perceiving and understanding objects, which guarantees the performance of models. However, in biomedical image tasks, the insufficiency of data may prevent models from effectively capturing multi-scale features. In this paper, we propose Feature Pyramid Block (FPB), a novel structure to improve multi-scale feature representation within a single convolutional layer, which can be easily plugged into existing convolutional networks. Experiments on public biomedical image datasets prove consistent performance improvement with FPB. Furthermore, the convergence speed is faster and the computational costs are lower when using FPB, which proves high efficiency of our method.